My
ENC4404 Advanced Writing and Editing class has taken on a huge task, a task
that required a heavy amount of participation. We decided to create our own Wikipedia
article on a topic that we have based our entire semester on: public sphere writing.
Not only was it a group project, but a group project that required the entire
class to collaborate as a whole. On the verge of completing this task, I would
have to say that the hardest part of it was making everyone’s individual inclusions
flow cohesively. In his article “The Rhetoric of Intertextuality,” Frank D’Angelo
discusses the term, this term suggests that “every text is connected to other
texts by citations, quotations, allusions, borrowings, adaptations,
appropriations, parody, pastiche, imitation, and the like. Every text is a
diagonal relationship with other texts” (D’Angelo 33). This relationship
between texts can be reflected directly within my class’ Wikipedia project.
Without the use of intertextuality, our Wikipedia page would not have been able
to come together so quickly and smoothly. Every section working within our “Public
Sphere Writing” Wikipedia article had to borrow information from other scholarly
sources in order to create new discourse that fit the guidelines of Wikipedia.
Since anyone with Internet access
can enter into Wikipedia and edit anything they wish to, Wikipedia provides its
users with a set of guidelines to follow in order to maintain order. These
guidelines are very helpful in creating an article for Wikipedia. On a page
titled “Wikipedia: List of guidelines,”
a list of important guidelines are provided. These guidelines enable Wikipedia
to suggest to its users how to delete, how to edit, how to title articles, how
to behave, etc. By following these guidelines and providing content through the
use of intertextuality I was able to contribute to the Wikipedia community and
further my role as a true Wikipedian.
Although collaborating with such a
large community was a difficult task, another task that proved to be just as
difficult was my individual work making sure sources were provided for each
substantiating claim. The reason this task became so complex was because of the
size of the article and the amount of sources and information provided. The
amount of information on our “Public Sphere Writing” Wikipedia article is due
to the fact that we have intertextually provided a vast amount of accumulated
sources from throughout the semester and from other Editing, Writing, and Media
courses at Florida State University. This ties back into D’Angelo and his
discussion of different modes of intertextuality: “The fifth mode of
intertextuality is pastiche. The American Heritage Dictionary defines pastiche
as ‘a word or style produced by borrowing fragments, ingredients, or motifs
from various sources’” (D’Angelo 39/40). By borrowing fragments from so many
sources, our Wikipedia class article expanded into a rather large space. However,
having a surplus of information isn’t always a bad thing, as long as all of the
information provided is necessary and has sources to back up any claims that
are made.
Ultimately, being a part of this
task was a lot of hard work, consisting of piling through numerous sources and
making everyone’s sections flow well together. Even though the work was hard,
it definitely left me with the rewarding feeling of accomplishment. My class
now has an article that is self-published within the realm of Wikipedia.
Putting together our “Public Sphere Writing” article required a lot of collaboration
and a lot of intertextuality. As I mentioned in a previous post, Wikipedia is
defined by collaboration and intertextuality, and I know that even more so now,
having complete this assignment. Now that this collaborative project has
arrived at completion, I have the urge to go back into Wikipedia’s “stub categories” or “articles to be expanded”
to do some even more collaborative editing. This may be the beginning of stages
of becoming a Wikipediholic.
